Within the study of language and social interaction, in which this book is situated, the concept of “accountability”—including related concepts, such as “account” or “motive,” “accounting,” and ...
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Within the study of language and social interaction, in which this book is situated, the concept of “accountability”—including related concepts, such as “account” or “motive,” “accounting,” and “being accountable”—has been of longstanding interest in terms of how interactants in both ordinary and organizational contexts manage their image or reputation, as well as how they achieve mutual understanding. However, these concepts are polysemous, with different senses being rather dramatic, such as accountability as “moral responsibility” and accountability as “intelligibility.” Even today this fact is not always remembered or fully recognized or appreciated by scholars, which has arguably slowed the development of these concepts. This volume brings together a collection of novel, conversation-analytic studies addressing accountability, with the goal of re-exposing its multiple senses, reiterating their interrelationships and, in doing so, breaking new conceptual ground and exposing new pathways for future research. Chapters advance our understanding of central theoretical issues, including turn taking, sequence and preference organization, repair, membership categorization, action formation and ascription, social solidarity and affiliation, and the relevance of context. Chapters range contextually, canvassing interactions between friends and family members, and during talk shows, broadcast news interviews, airline reservations, and medical visits. Chapters also range culturally, including English, Japanese, and Korean data.Less

Accountability in Social Interaction

Published in print: 2016-07-01

Within the study of language and social interaction, in which this book is situated, the concept of “accountability”—including related concepts, such as “account” or “motive,” “accounting,” and “being accountable”—has been of longstanding interest in terms of how interactants in both ordinary and organizational contexts manage their image or reputation, as well as how they achieve mutual understanding. However, these concepts are polysemous, with different senses being rather dramatic, such as accountability as “moral responsibility” and accountability as “intelligibility.” Even today this fact is not always remembered or fully recognized or appreciated by scholars, which has arguably slowed the development of these concepts. This volume brings together a collection of novel, conversation-analytic studies addressing accountability, with the goal of re-exposing its multiple senses, reiterating their interrelationships and, in doing so, breaking new conceptual ground and exposing new pathways for future research. Chapters advance our understanding of central theoretical issues, including turn taking, sequence and preference organization, repair, membership categorization, action formation and ascription, social solidarity and affiliation, and the relevance of context. Chapters range contextually, canvassing interactions between friends and family members, and during talk shows, broadcast news interviews, airline reservations, and medical visits. Chapters also range culturally, including English, Japanese, and Korean data.

Relatively little is known about Africa’s endangered languages. In an era when we are racing against time to study and preserve the world’s threatened languages before they go extinct, a ...
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Relatively little is known about Africa’s endangered languages. In an era when we are racing against time to study and preserve the world’s threatened languages before they go extinct, a disproportionately low amount of research and funding is devoted to the study of endangered African languages when compared to any other linguistically threatened region in the world. More regrettably, even less has been done to create a community of Africanists and concerned linguists who might work on rectifying this situation. This book puts some of Africa’s many endangered languages in the spotlight in the hope of reversing this trend. Both documentary and theoretical perspectives are taken with a view toward highlighting the symbiotic relationship between the two approaches and exploring its consequences for research on and preservation of endangered languages, both in the African context and more broadly. The articles that comprise this volume collectively advocate nurturing synergistic partnerships between documentary and theoretical linguists researching endangered African languages in order to stimulate and enhance the depth, visibility, and impact of endangered African language research in the service of altering the landscape of scholarship and activism in this field.Less

Published in print: 2017-08-31

Relatively little is known about Africa’s endangered languages. In an era when we are racing against time to study and preserve the world’s threatened languages before they go extinct, a disproportionately low amount of research and funding is devoted to the study of endangered African languages when compared to any other linguistically threatened region in the world. More regrettably, even less has been done to create a community of Africanists and concerned linguists who might work on rectifying this situation. This book puts some of Africa’s many endangered languages in the spotlight in the hope of reversing this trend. Both documentary and theoretical perspectives are taken with a view toward highlighting the symbiotic relationship between the two approaches and exploring its consequences for research on and preservation of endangered languages, both in the African context and more broadly. The articles that comprise this volume collectively advocate nurturing synergistic partnerships between documentary and theoretical linguists researching endangered African languages in order to stimulate and enhance the depth, visibility, and impact of endangered African language research in the service of altering the landscape of scholarship and activism in this field.

This book shows how Internet and mobile technologies — including instant messaging (IM), cell phones, multitasking, social networking Web sites, blogs, and wikis — are profoundly influencing the way ...
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This book shows how Internet and mobile technologies — including instant messaging (IM), cell phones, multitasking, social networking Web sites, blogs, and wikis — are profoundly influencing the way we read and write, speak and listen, but not in the ways we might suppose. The book looks at language in an online and mobile world. It reveals for instance that email, IM, and text messaging have had surprisingly little impact on student writing. Electronic media has magnified the laid-back “whatever” attitude toward formal writing that young people everywhere have embraced, but it is not a cause of it. A more troubling trend, according to the book, is the myriad ways in which we block incoming IMs, camouflage ourselves on Facebook, and use ring tones or caller ID to screen incoming calls on our mobile phones. The book argues that our ability to decide who to talk to is likely to be among the most lasting influences that information and communication technology has upon the ways we communicate with one another. Moreover, as more and more people are “always on” one technology or another — whether communicating, working, or just surfing the web or playing games — we have to ask what kind of people do we become, as individuals and as family members or friends, if the relationships we form must increasingly compete for our attention with digital media?Less

Always On : Language in an Online and Mobile World

Naomi S. Baron

Published in print: 2008-04-17

This book shows how Internet and mobile technologies — including instant messaging (IM), cell phones, multitasking, social networking Web sites, blogs, and wikis — are profoundly influencing the way we read and write, speak and listen, but not in the ways we might suppose. The book looks at language in an online and mobile world. It reveals for instance that email, IM, and text messaging have had surprisingly little impact on student writing. Electronic media has magnified the laid-back “whatever” attitude toward formal writing that young people everywhere have embraced, but it is not a cause of it. A more troubling trend, according to the book, is the myriad ways in which we block incoming IMs, camouflage ourselves on Facebook, and use ring tones or caller ID to screen incoming calls on our mobile phones. The book argues that our ability to decide who to talk to is likely to be among the most lasting influences that information and communication technology has upon the ways we communicate with one another. Moreover, as more and more people are “always on” one technology or another — whether communicating, working, or just surfing the web or playing games — we have to ask what kind of people do we become, as individuals and as family members or friends, if the relationships we form must increasingly compete for our attention with digital media?

This book, by a group of leading international scholars, outlines the history of the spoken dialects of Arabic from the Arab conquests of the seventh century up to the present day. It specifically ...
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This book, by a group of leading international scholars, outlines the history of the spoken dialects of Arabic from the Arab conquests of the seventh century up to the present day. It specifically investigates the evolution of Arabic as a spoken language, in contrast to the many existing studies that focus on written Classical or Modern Standard Arabic. The volume begins with a discursive introduction that deals with important issues in the general scholarly context, including the indigenous myth and probable reality of the history of Arabic; Arabic dialect geography and typology; types of internally and externally motivated linguistic change; social indexicalization; and pidginization and creolization in Arabic-speaking communities. Most chapters then focus on developments in a specific region—Mauritania, the Maghreb, Egypt, the Levant, the Northern Fertile Crescent, the Gulf, and South Arabia—with one exploring Judaeo-Arabic, a group of varieties historically spread over a wider area. The remaining two chapters in the volume examine individual linguistic features of particular historical interest and controversy, specifically the origin and evolution of the b- verbal prefix, and the adnominal linker –an/–in. The volume will be of interest to scholars and students of the linguistic and social history of Arabic as well as to comparative linguists interested in topics such as linguistic typology and language change.Less

Published in print: 2018-09-13

This book, by a group of leading international scholars, outlines the history of the spoken dialects of Arabic from the Arab conquests of the seventh century up to the present day. It specifically investigates the evolution of Arabic as a spoken language, in contrast to the many existing studies that focus on written Classical or Modern Standard Arabic. The volume begins with a discursive introduction that deals with important issues in the general scholarly context, including the indigenous myth and probable reality of the history of Arabic; Arabic dialect geography and typology; types of internally and externally motivated linguistic change; social indexicalization; and pidginization and creolization in Arabic-speaking communities. Most chapters then focus on developments in a specific region—Mauritania, the Maghreb, Egypt, the Levant, the Northern Fertile Crescent, the Gulf, and South Arabia—with one exploring Judaeo-Arabic, a group of varieties historically spread over a wider area. The remaining two chapters in the volume examine individual linguistic features of particular historical interest and controversy, specifically the origin and evolution of the b- verbal prefix, and the adnominal linker –an/–in. The volume will be of interest to scholars and students of the linguistic and social history of Arabic as well as to comparative linguists interested in topics such as linguistic typology and language change.

Language is not just a means of communication but also a powerful symbol of identity in society at the individual, Self, and group levels. This symbolic role of language comes to the fore under ...
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Language is not just a means of communication but also a powerful symbol of identity in society at the individual, Self, and group levels. This symbolic role of language comes to the fore under conditions of war, conflict, displacement, and persistent cultural anxiety in society. Using autoethnography and autobiography, the book provides a novel way of investigating these issues in the Middle East using Arabic as a paradigmatic case. A study of personal names, the linguistic landscape, place names, and code-names further links language to war, conflict, displacement, and diasporisation at the level of the group and the individual. In the process issues of trauma and globalization are woven into this array of themes, revealing the complexity of the language-identity link in society. The book frames its findings against a wide-ranging critique of the dominant, correlational approach in Arabic sociolinguitics. It argues that this approach does not exploit the link between language and the major narratives of identity and conflict in the Middle East. The book argues for combining this approach with qualitative studies that are nevertheless aware of the limits of interpretation and the positionality of the researcher. The book further argues that through this combined endeavour a richer and more complex understanding of the socio-political underpinnings of language can be generated to help bridge the gaps between the various disciplines and areas of study that converge on language a a field of investigation and analysis.Less

Arabic, Self and Identity : A Study in Conflict and Displacement

Yasir Suleiman

Published in print: 2011-08-10

Language is not just a means of communication but also a powerful symbol of identity in society at the individual, Self, and group levels. This symbolic role of language comes to the fore under conditions of war, conflict, displacement, and persistent cultural anxiety in society. Using autoethnography and autobiography, the book provides a novel way of investigating these issues in the Middle East using Arabic as a paradigmatic case. A study of personal names, the linguistic landscape, place names, and code-names further links language to war, conflict, displacement, and diasporisation at the level of the group and the individual. In the process issues of trauma and globalization are woven into this array of themes, revealing the complexity of the language-identity link in society. The book frames its findings against a wide-ranging critique of the dominant, correlational approach in Arabic sociolinguitics. It argues that this approach does not exploit the link between language and the major narratives of identity and conflict in the Middle East. The book argues for combining this approach with qualitative studies that are nevertheless aware of the limits of interpretation and the positionality of the researcher. The book further argues that through this combined endeavour a richer and more complex understanding of the socio-political underpinnings of language can be generated to help bridge the gaps between the various disciplines and areas of study that converge on language a a field of investigation and analysis.

This book is about media, mediation, and meaning. It focuses on a set of interrelated processes whereby seemingly human-specific modes of meaning become automated by machines, formatted by protocols, ...
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This book is about media, mediation, and meaning. It focuses on a set of interrelated processes whereby seemingly human-specific modes of meaning become automated by machines, formatted by protocols, and networked by infrastructures—that is, the way computation replaces interpretation, information effaces meaning, and infrastructure displaces interaction. The book asks: what does it take to automate, format, and network meaningful practices; what difference does this make for those who engage in such practices; and what are the stakes? Reciprocally it questions how can we better understand computational processes from the standpoint of meaningful practices; how can we leverage such processes to better understand such practices; and what lies in wait. In answering these questions, this book stays very close to fundamental concerns of computer science as they emerged in the middle part of the twentieth century. Rather than foreground the latest application, technology, or interface, it tries to account for processes that underlie each and every digital technology being deployed today. And rather than use the tools of conventional social theory to investigate such technologies, it leverages key ideas of American pragmatism—a philosophical stance that understands the world, and our relation to it, in a way that avoids many of the conundrums and criticisms of twentieth-century social theory. It puts this stance in dialogue with certain currents and key texts in anthropology and linguistics, science and technology studies, critical theory, computer science, and media studies.Less

The Art of Interpretation in the Age of Computation

Paul Kockelman

Published in print: 2017-09-14

This book is about media, mediation, and meaning. It focuses on a set of interrelated processes whereby seemingly human-specific modes of meaning become automated by machines, formatted by protocols, and networked by infrastructures—that is, the way computation replaces interpretation, information effaces meaning, and infrastructure displaces interaction. The book asks: what does it take to automate, format, and network meaningful practices; what difference does this make for those who engage in such practices; and what are the stakes? Reciprocally it questions how can we better understand computational processes from the standpoint of meaningful practices; how can we leverage such processes to better understand such practices; and what lies in wait. In answering these questions, this book stays very close to fundamental concerns of computer science as they emerged in the middle part of the twentieth century. Rather than foreground the latest application, technology, or interface, it tries to account for processes that underlie each and every digital technology being deployed today. And rather than use the tools of conventional social theory to investigate such technologies, it leverages key ideas of American pragmatism—a philosophical stance that understands the world, and our relation to it, in a way that avoids many of the conundrums and criticisms of twentieth-century social theory. It puts this stance in dialogue with certain currents and key texts in anthropology and linguistics, science and technology studies, critical theory, computer science, and media studies.

This book examines issues of language, identity, and culture among the rapidly growing Asian Pacific American (APA) population. The distinguished contributors—who represent a broad range of ...
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This book examines issues of language, identity, and culture among the rapidly growing Asian Pacific American (APA) population. The distinguished contributors—who represent a broad range of perspectives from anthropology, sociolinguistics, English, and education—focus on the analysis of spoken interaction and explore multiple facets of the APA experience. The book covers topics such as media representations of APAs; codeswitching and language crossing; and narratives of ethnic identity. The collection examines the experiences of Asian Pacific Americans of different ethnicities, generations, ages, and geographic locations across home, school, community, and performance sites.Less

Published in print: 2009-01-01

This book examines issues of language, identity, and culture among the rapidly growing Asian Pacific American (APA) population. The distinguished contributors—who represent a broad range of perspectives from anthropology, sociolinguistics, English, and education—focus on the analysis of spoken interaction and explore multiple facets of the APA experience. The book covers topics such as media representations of APAs; codeswitching and language crossing; and narratives of ethnic identity. The collection examines the experiences of Asian Pacific Americans of different ethnicities, generations, ages, and geographic locations across home, school, community, and performance sites.

In virtually every bilingual situation empirically studied, borrowed items make up the overwhelming majority of other-language material, but short shrift has been given to this major manifestation of ...
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In virtually every bilingual situation empirically studied, borrowed items make up the overwhelming majority of other-language material, but short shrift has been given to this major manifestation of language contact. As a result, scholars have long been divided over whether borrowing is a process distinct from code-switching, leading to long-standing controversy over how best to theorize language mixing strategies. This volume focuses on lexical borrowing as it actually occurs in the discourse of bilingual speakers, building on more than three decades of original research. Based on vast quantities of spontaneous performance data and a highly ramified analytical apparatus, it characterizes the phenomenon in the speech community and in the grammar, both synchronically and diachronically. In contrast to most other treatments, which deal with the product of borrowing, this work examines the process: How speakers incorporate foreign items into their bilingual discourse, how they adapt them to recipient-language grammatical structure, how these forms diffuse across speakers and communities, how long they persist in real time, and whether they change over the duration. It proposes falsifiable hypotheses about established loanwords and nonce borrowings and tests them empirically on a wealth of unique datasets on a wide variety of typologically similar and distinct language pairs. A major focus is the detailed analysis of integration, the principal mechanism underlying the borrowing process. Though the shape the borrowed form assumes may be colored by community convention, we show that the act of transforming donor-language elements into native material is universal.Less

Borrowing : Loanwords in the Speech Community and in the Grammar

Shana Poplack

Published in print: 2018-02-22

In virtually every bilingual situation empirically studied, borrowed items make up the overwhelming majority of other-language material, but short shrift has been given to this major manifestation of language contact. As a result, scholars have long been divided over whether borrowing is a process distinct from code-switching, leading to long-standing controversy over how best to theorize language mixing strategies. This volume focuses on lexical borrowing as it actually occurs in the discourse of bilingual speakers, building on more than three decades of original research. Based on vast quantities of spontaneous performance data and a highly ramified analytical apparatus, it characterizes the phenomenon in the speech community and in the grammar, both synchronically and diachronically. In contrast to most other treatments, which deal with the product of borrowing, this work examines the process: How speakers incorporate foreign items into their bilingual discourse, how they adapt them to recipient-language grammatical structure, how these forms diffuse across speakers and communities, how long they persist in real time, and whether they change over the duration. It proposes falsifiable hypotheses about established loanwords and nonce borrowings and tests them empirically on a wealth of unique datasets on a wide variety of typologically similar and distinct language pairs. A major focus is the detailed analysis of integration, the principal mechanism underlying the borrowing process. Though the shape the borrowed form assumes may be colored by community convention, we show that the act of transforming donor-language elements into native material is universal.

This book looks at brevity as an important topic for interdisciplinary study. It studies the diversity of ways in which brevity is achieved in conversation and examines the psychological, ...
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This book looks at brevity as an important topic for interdisciplinary study. It studies the diversity of ways in which brevity is achieved in conversation and examines the psychological, philosophical, and linguistic problems associated with the subject. When people make a contribution to a conversation, they tend towards brevity: they use elliptical constructions, exploit salient features of the environment in which the conversation is situated, make gestures, take account of what has been said before, either in the present conversation or in previous ones, and tailor their words to what they know of the beliefs and the personalities of the others taking part. In doing all this they generally make no obvious or unusual mental effort, and interpretation and comprehension are not hindered. Some of the problems of explaining this phenomenon are philosophically complex, and invite new explorations in linguistics, neuroscience, psychology, and computer science. The book is the culmination of a multidisciplinary research project: it discusses psycholinguistic interpretations of the mechanisms at play in conversation, and takes full account of the latest developments in all the disciplines involved.Less

Brevity

Published in print: 2013-10-03

This book looks at brevity as an important topic for interdisciplinary study. It studies the diversity of ways in which brevity is achieved in conversation and examines the psychological, philosophical, and linguistic problems associated with the subject. When people make a contribution to a conversation, they tend towards brevity: they use elliptical constructions, exploit salient features of the environment in which the conversation is situated, make gestures, take account of what has been said before, either in the present conversation or in previous ones, and tailor their words to what they know of the beliefs and the personalities of the others taking part. In doing all this they generally make no obvious or unusual mental effort, and interpretation and comprehension are not hindered. Some of the problems of explaining this phenomenon are philosophically complex, and invite new explorations in linguistics, neuroscience, psychology, and computer science. The book is the culmination of a multidisciplinary research project: it discusses psycholinguistic interpretations of the mechanisms at play in conversation, and takes full account of the latest developments in all the disciplines involved.

The main goal of this book is to demonstrate that the languages and dialects of Europe are becoming increasingly alike. This unifying process — that goes at least as far back as the Roman empire — is ...
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The main goal of this book is to demonstrate that the languages and dialects of Europe are becoming increasingly alike. This unifying process — that goes at least as far back as the Roman empire — is accelerating and affects every one of Europe’s 150 or so languages, including those of different families such as Basque and Finnish. The changes are by no means restricted to lexical borrowing, but involve every grammatical aspect of the language. They are usually so minute that neither native speakers nor trained linguists notice them. But they accumulate and give rise to new grammatical structures that lead, in turn, to new patterns of areal relationship. The book describes linguistic transfer from one language to another in terms of grammatical replication, using grammaticalization theory as a framework. The linguistic domains covered in more detail are definite and indefinite articles, possession, case marking, and the relationship between questions and subordination.Less

The Changing Languages of Europe

Bernd HeineTania Kuteva

Published in print: 2006-06-22

The main goal of this book is to demonstrate that the languages and dialects of Europe are becoming increasingly alike. This unifying process — that goes at least as far back as the Roman empire — is accelerating and affects every one of Europe’s 150 or so languages, including those of different families such as Basque and Finnish. The changes are by no means restricted to lexical borrowing, but involve every grammatical aspect of the language. They are usually so minute that neither native speakers nor trained linguists notice them. But they accumulate and give rise to new grammatical structures that lead, in turn, to new patterns of areal relationship. The book describes linguistic transfer from one language to another in terms of grammatical replication, using grammaticalization theory as a framework. The linguistic domains covered in more detail are definite and indefinite articles, possession, case marking, and the relationship between questions and subordination.

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